Articles and devices for the transport and management of bulk material are well known, and take many forms. It is quite typical for these bulk materials to be put upon or within articles such as pallets and containers for transport or storage. These containers are often quite large to make transport of the bulk material more economical, and are commonly outfitted with receiving apertures at the base thereof for engagement and manipulation by devices such as forklifts, or other large, specialized and expensive equipment.
The articles and devices have heretofore had wide usage in factories and processing plants for holding raw materials, transporting material from one processing stage to the next, holding quantities of parts to be assembled into larger assemblies, and in the trucking and railway industries for transporting raw materials from their place of acquisition to the factories and processing plants, and bringing more finished goods to users and distributors. After these goods have been used, a significant portion of the goods, waste products from its usage or consumption, as well as individual packaging and other materials provided therewith become refuse or waste, and again must be accumulated and transported for processing.
In recent times, environmental and health concerns have significantly changed the manner in which most items are discarded. For instance, with the current trend towards recycling, certain goods deemed recyclable should be separated from other goods so that they may be delivered to the proper recycling plant. Everyone from individual consumers to industrial giants are now compelled or at least strongly encouraged to separate their waste products. Paper type refuse must be separated for recycling, as is the case with glass, metal, and plastic. Health care industries must now separate sharps waste and biological waste for incineration in addition to the aforementioned materials. Many of these separated materials are to be sub categorized and separated again when they reach a waste processing sub station. Biodegradable wastes remaining after processing or separation must be brought to landfill areas for burial. Each of these materials require a separate bin for accumulation until a substantially full load is achieved whereupon it will be dispatched appropriately for the next stage of processing.
Correspondingly, at virtually every level above the consumer, there has been a prolific increase in the use of large, open top containers for the accumulation and transport of these refuse materials. Nestable, tapered bottom containers have recently become popular, as taught by Gesuale in U.S. Pat. No. 5,281,073, incorporated herein by reference as if more fully set forth, enabling the efficient transportation and storage of such containers when empty, and as a means for management of the increased bulk material container population. Besides having side walls which taper inwardly from top to bottom, a feature common to these and other open top material containers is one or more external ribs, peripheral lips or rims which strengthen or support the container or portions thereof.
Therefore, where waste management was once a simple affair directed to gathering waste products for disposal, it has now become a handling intensive affair involving bulk material containers which can present considerable difficulty for those entities not having access to forklifts and other similarly expensive devices and material handling equipment.
Furthermore, such bulk material containers commonly used at construction sites, storage containers, pallets, and the like may also be used to store items other than refuse, such as wallboard and other construction supplies. While certain heavy equipment is usually present at construction sites, forklifts and the like may only be present at larger construction sites.
Thus, in areas just above the consumer level, such as apartment buildings, business parks, and the like, refuse collection may require significant handling and management. For instance, designated storage containers may be located near buildings so that the proper items may be deposited in the proper containers. These containers may than need to be moved from building to building or from a building to a holding site until they are full, and then moved again to a particularly accessible location for pickup by an appropriate trucking service or the like. They may likely need to be manipulated within close quarters, such as alleys, driveways, and the like, since much of this activity is now being carried out by entities that never anticipated the need for space necessary to accumulate multiple types of waste.
A common size for such bulk material containers is approximately twenty feet long by eight feet wide so as to hold a sufficient quantity of material to make transport economical, and because that configuration is well suited for carrying by box and flatbed type tractor trailer trucks and railway cars. Because of the length and weight of such containers with their contents, it has been impractical to carry them in a longitudinal orientation using conventional forklifts, since a considerable center of mass could be positioned sufficiently far ahead of the front wheels of the forklift to cause the forklift to tip forwardly. Such a situation could require a larger and more expensive forklift than would otherwise be necessary, or attachment of ballast to the back of the forklift resulting in diminished capacity of the forklift by the amount of ballast attached. Accordingly, these larger bulk material containers have their apertures for receiving forklift blades located so that the bulk material containers are oriented transversely to the forklift for lifting and carrying, thereby placing the center of mass of the load closer to the forklift, and making such moment type overloading and consequent tipping less likely.
While some smaller storage containers are designed to be mobile, the majority of containers which are intended to store items of significant weight are designed to be stationary, since a container full of construction debris is unlikely to be able to be pushed around manually by an individual. Insurance liability is also a consideration with storage containers since they could present a significant danger if they become loose. Accordingly, most of these articles for carrying bulk materials are usually not equipped with wheels, except occasionally at one end to allow heavy handling equipment to drag and reposition the container for pickup. In such cases, the wheels do not particularly enhance the mobility of the container, since a large and specialized piece of equipment is already necessary to lift one end of the container. Rather, the wheels on such a container are primarily valuable for minimizing the damage caused to any flooring or pavement below during such dragging and repositioning operations.
Very often, it is desirable to transport these containers within enclosed vehicles. This can be to protect the environment from the contained materials, which may be particularly malodorous, or simply to prevent the materials from falling out and littering the nearby landscape. On the other hand, enclosed transport of these containers may be equally desirable to protect the contained materials from the environment, especially where the contained materials are foodstuffs, such as grain or even coffee beans as examples. The longitudinal orientation of these containers within truck or railway car bodies, and the typical lack of space around the containers leaves only the rearward end of the container accessible. This requires that they be manipulated from the accessible end, and prevents the necessary transverse approach of a forklift, as described above, to engage and lift the container for carrying and unloading. Accordingly, this often means the containers are dragged across the floor when loaded and unloaded from their enclosed transport bodies, and this can quickly destroy the floors of these bodies.
Tn the cases of landfills, where many such bulk material containers are sent, the nature of the operations are temporary. A hole will be dug, the transported refuse material put into the hole, and after covering over the material, the process repeated at another location. While these temporary locations will typically have backhoes, end loaders and the like for digging and burial operations, loading docks and similar platforms necessary for the transfer of these large bulk material containers to and from transporter bodies are rare. Thus, more specialized and expensive equipment, like dump trucks, must be used. A similar situation lacking the advantage of such loading docks and platforms exists in the cases of agricultural products, where after completion of harvesting in one typically undeveloped area, the operation moves to another undeveloped area. Consequently, there are many applications that could otherwise take advantage of the usage of relatively inexpensive containers instead of methods using specialized, more expensive equipment, if not for the difficulty loading, unloading and manipulating of such containers.
Present methods to move storage containers short distances such as from building to building in a business park, shopping center, apartment complex, or the like, in the best cases include the use of forklifts and other like apparatus. However, as mentioned above, even if useable under the circumstances, forklifts and the like are expensive, and they require qualified individuals to operate them. While large factories and processing plants typically have such forklifts and the like, a need exists for a less expensive and more highly maneuverable apparatus better able to lift, manipulate and transport such bulk material containers.